I didn’t answer her.
“I’m ready to go back,” she said finally, offering me her arm as if I was her escort to the ball. I wondered if she’d even heard me.
The clerk at Wall Drug advised us to use the old-fashioned bug bite cure of baking soda and water. “Stops the itching better than calamine lotion, I think,” she said. She got us a box and showed Dory how to mix up a paste with water. We got calamine lotion too because Iris didn’t want to put baking soda on her eyelids. By the time we’d slathered ourselves up with white paste and pink goo, Iris could actually get her right eye almost all the way open and the left one was better, too.
We were all starving after our morning of high adventure and ordered big breakfasts. All except Iris. I couldn’t figure out her eating habits; she either ate everything in sight or nothing at all.
Marshall looked at her delicately spooning up a small yogurt. “That’s all you’re eating? Your eyes are swollen shut, not your mouth.”
Iris looked at him, but, for a change, said nothing. Maybe my little speech had had an effect after all.
Dory gave Iris a worried look, but I didn’t know if it was about the yogurt or the mosquito bites. When Marsh and Iris went back for one more tour of the gift shop, I decided I’d ask her.
“Dory, do you think Iris eats strangely? I mean, sometimes she eats almost nothing, and other times she eats like a horse.”
Dory’s head bobbed up from the map she was looking at. “Oh, well . . . I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I mean, she’s a teenager. A young teenager. Don’t you remember being worried about your weight sometimes?”
“Sure. I just don’t remember being so extreme about it.”
Dory sighed and circled her neck on her shoulders. “Well, don’t worry about it, Robin. I’m sure she’s fine.” She turned her attention to my arm. “How’s that doing? I feel so bad about you girls getting bitten to pieces.”
I sighed. “It’s not a big deal. When you go camping, you get mosquito bites.”
She smiled and ran her hand over my hair, a thing adults do that I hate. “You’re a great kid, you know that? I hope your mother appreciates you.”
I didn’t know about that, but I was certainly beginning to appreciate her after a few days with the Tewksburys.
By late morning Iris’s eyes were open far enough for us to take a hike in the Badlands. Dory filled a thermos with lemonade and I carried a backpack with our lunch in it: a loaf of bread, cheese, apples, and cookies. Marshall’s backpack held several liters of water and the rest of the sun lotion that we’d applied heavily over the top of the baking soda paste scabs. Iris, of course, had only herself to think about as we headed out from the visitor’s center looking like a band of badly glued action figures.
As soon as we started on the trail, though, I felt more like an extraterrestrial than a toy. The landscape became suddenly stark and bizarre and it was hard to believe we hadn’t left earth. That this was South Dakota, no less. Rows of sharp pinnacles rose up and dropped away in ridges up and down a valley. The colors fascinated me: Shades of red, white, black, and brown ran in bands from pinnacle to pinnacle and across the ravines. It reminded me of the glass bottles of colored sand Franny and I used to make when we were little, the green layer over the blue over the red.
Marshall read from the guidebook. “The landforms known as badlands are sculptures made by wind and water. The accumulation of sediment began 75 million years ago when the Rocky Mountains rose up in the West, and sand, silt, clay, and volcanic ash were stacked layer upon layer, thousands of feet deep.”
He looked up from the book. “Seventy-five million years. God.”
“Exactly,” Dory said.
“It says that many mammals died here in floods 40 to 25 million years ago. And there are still many fossils found here all the time, but if you find one you can’t pick it up—you have to remember where it was and report it to one of the park rangers. Wouldn’t that be neat? I want to find a fossil!”
“I’m sure ten-year-olds find them all the time,” Iris said as she tied a straw hat on her head and covered her poor eyes with sunglasses.
“It’s possible!” Marshall said. “You never think I can do anything!”
I got my baseball cap out of my backpack, and then placed myself in the line of fire between my cousins so that when Iris turned to level her brother again, she found me staring at her instead.
Her grin was like a dog baring its teeth before it bites. “That’s probably your boyfriend’s hat, right? That he hit home runs in or something.”
“It’s my hat, that I hit home runs in,” I said, running my hand over the carefully curved brim and wishing my home runs had been more numerous. Diamond dust had dulled the bright yellow, but the hat fit me like it was born for the job.
“You play baseball?” Marshall asked.
“Softball. I’m a shortstop.”
“Hmm. Good hat,” he said. “If you don’t mind looking like Big Bird.”
Dory led the way up a series of stairs built into a hillside and then we walked along a high ledge. The hike felt good after sitting in the car the past two days. Even my cousins seemed to be enjoying themselves—at least they’d stopped bickering for a while. Everybody was quiet for a change, thinking their own thoughts, I guess. Personally, I was thinking about the letter I’d written to Chris—was it too needy? Was I nice enough? Would he be happy to get it, or would it just remind him of what a drag it was to have this clingy girlfriend back home?
But then, I suddenly realized where I was—on vacation and, apparently, on the moon—and I just decided to stop thinking about my problems for a while. Maybe there would be something to worry about when Chris got back from Italy and I got back from California, but right now I was in an amazing place and I just wanted to be here.
We stopped for lunch at a beautiful spot with views out over the whole valley. Dory and I each got out our Swiss Army knives and started cutting off chunks of cheese and bread and passing them around. Amazingly, Iris poured glasses of lemonade for all of us, not just herself. Marshall immediately pulled out a small drawing pad and some colored pencils and got to work. I didn’t blame him for thinking art was more important than lunch; being here made me wish I could draw, too. I took some pictures, but I had a feeling Marshall’s drawings would capture the place better, his crumbly pencils so similar to the crumbling stone. Unless, of course, he was drawing the three of us with arrows buried in our chests.
Dory seemed sad again, looking at the gorgeous landscape around her. She watched Iris grab a handful of cookies and said, “I wish Daddy could be here to see this.” Neither of her children responded. Instead they looked away as though the feeling embarrassed them. Iris stuck the cookies back in the bag.
I didn’t think we should all ignore Dory when she seemed to want to talk. “Did Uncle Allen like to take trips like this?” I asked.
“I don’t really know,” Dory said. “He was always so busy—the only vacations we took coincided with his work. We went to London once when he had to give a speech at a conference there. And last year we spent a week in Paris while Allen went to all sorts of meetings. That was fun, wasn’t it?” She looked eagerly at Iris and Marshall.
Iris shrugged. “Shopping was fun.”
But Marshall was enthusiastic. “I liked going to the museums. Paris has the best museums.”
“Yes, it does,” Dory agreed.
“It’s too hard when you can’t talk to people,” Iris said.
“So learn French,” Marshall said. “That’s what I’m going to do.”
Iris sniffed. “Not if they don’t let you back into school.” One step forward—two steps back.
Marshall looked away, then folded up his drawing pad and stuffed it back into his backpack. Dory gave the dirty look to Iris this time, but she didn’t say anything. We packed up our garbage and got back on the trail.
This time Marsh took the lead, running ahead and even detouring off the pat
h to walk around some of the big rocks. Suddenly he disappeared from sight altogether.
“Marsh,” Dory called. “Don’t get too far ahead. I don’t want to lose you.”
There was no answer.
“Marshall! Where did he go? Did you see which direction?” Dory asked.
“He’s okay,” Iris said. “He’s over there someplace.”
“Marsh!” Dory shouted again, this time with panic in her voice. “Where are you?”
Then he shouted back. “I found something! Come here!”
Sure enough. When we wound our way through the rock maze, we found Marsh crouched over a small boulder. “It’s a fish,” he said, pointing to a fossilized skeleton imbedded in the side of the stone.
Dory knelt down and gave him a hug. “I was worried when I couldn’t see you.”
He shrugged. “Why? There wasn’t anything dangerous going on.”
“You could have gotten lost or . . .”
I interrupted her. “Dory, look at this . . . what Marsh found.”
Reluctantly, she looked away from her son. Her eyes widened. “Marsh, oh, my God!”
“You did find a fossil!” I said.
“Told ya.” He glared at his sister who was silent.
He got out his drawing pad again and did a quick sketch of the fish caught in the rock, the scales, the eye, the fins . . . an entire fish. Dory and I did our best to help him memorize the exact location of the fossil find: off the trail to the left as you come down from the ridge, below a pinkish pinnacle, an oblong rock about two feet across. Marshall just about flew back to the visitor’s center. By the time we arrived he was already busy drawing a map for the ranger while the man looked at his sketch.
“Do you think it’s a new find?” Dory asked.
“It could well be,” the ranger told her. “We had a heavy rain here last week that stirred up a lot of new rocks. This place is constantly changing.”
“Will you let me know if it really is a new find?” Marshall asked him.
“I sure will. Write your name and address on the bottom of the map and I’ll let you know. If it’s really a whole fish fossil, that’s a great find, young man. Maybe you’ve got a future in paleontology!”
By the time we left Marsh was glowing. Dory and I kept complimenting him, too, on the way back to the car, but Iris was conspicuously quiet. As we stood next to the open doors of the van, waiting for the inside to cool down a little, Dory and I both turned our eyes on Iris.
“What?” she said. I shook my head and Dory looked away.
But when they crawled into the backseat together, Iris gave her brother a light slap on the knee. “Not bad, Marshmallow. Not bad.”
“You’re telling me,” Marsh said, grinning like mad.
“So now you’re gonna be a paleontologist, I guess.”
“Maybe,” he said, but then added, “if I knew what it was.”
It was the first time we all laughed together without meaning to hurt anybody’s feelings.
Really, Mom, the bites are mostly gone already.” “I can’t believe Dory didn’t bring any bug spray along if she intended to camp outside. Did she forget everything she learned growing up?”
It was great to hear Mom’s voice. I’d only been gone four days, but it seemed like ages since I’d spoken to anyone who wasn’t on the verge of either hysteria, rage, or depression.
“Are they right there?” she asked. “Can you talk? How’s it really going?”
“They’re outside packing the car. I think Dory wanted to give me some privacy.” It had been Dory who’d suggested I call Mom before we left the hotel. She’d even wanted me to use her phone card to do it, but I used the one Mom had given me. I guess Dory thinks we’re poverty-stricken or something.
“So, tell me.”
“Well, it’s okay, I guess. I mean, Dory kind of goes up and down. Last night she was crying in the bathroom with the shower running. I wouldn’t have known about it—Iris and I were in the room next door—but Marsh got scared and came running into our room.”
“Oh, gosh. Maybe this trip is too much for Dory.”
“Most of the time she seems all right—too all right, considering how weird her kids are.”
“Are they driving you crazy?”
“Sometimes they’re okay—like when they’re asleep. But, take last night for instance. Marsh was all upset because Dory was crying, and all Iris would say to him was, ‘Grow up, Marshall. The woman’s husband is dead.’ And she said it in this terrible voice—you had to hear it—like the woman wasn’t her own mother, and the husband wasn’t her dead father. Then, Marshall got furious and started hitting her . . . then she hit him back . . . they’re almost as dysfunctional as Franny’s family.”
For a moment there was silence on the other end of the line, then Mom breathed a sigh. “This whole thing was a big mistake. I shouldn’t have talked you into going. They should be spending the summer in therapy, not on the highway. If you want to come home, I’ll put the bus ticket on my credit card.”
It’s not as if I hadn’t thought about it myself, getting the hell away from these nutcases. But that wasn’t all there was to this trip—I’d loved walking through the Badlands, and yesterday’s drive to Mount Rushmore and then the Crazy Horse Memorial was amazing, too. Just the fact that people had figured out how to carve those giant heads into a mountain made you feel like you might want to do something more interesting with your own life than the puny ideas you’d imagined.
We could actually see people working on the Crazy Horse monument—it’s going to be enormous—the chief and his horse will look like they’re riding out of the mountain. It was amazing to think that people had goals so huge they knew they’d never accomplish them in their own lifetime—that their children and grandchildren would have to finish what they started.
It had never even occurred to me that all these wonderful, strange places existed. And now I was in Wyoming, a state I never gave a thought to before this trip, and here I was looking at maps and helping to plan our route through it. We were going to see the Big Horn Mountains and the Rockies, too, at least from a distance.
“I’m not really having that bad a time,” I said. “I mean, I like traveling. We’re driving through Wyoming today, which Dory says is beautiful. And she has some kind of surprise planned for us tonight. The place we’re staying, I think.”
“Right. She told me about it.”
“She told you? She planned it before?”
“You need advance reservations for this place. Besides, I had to know where to send your mail, didn’t I?”
How could I have forgotten to ask her! “Did I . . . ?”
“Yes, you did. I sent it on—you should get it in a day or two.”
“He probably didn’t even get mine yet. I should have written him sooner, but I’m not that good in letters.”
“I’m sure you’re good enough to please Chris, honey. He’s in love with you. He won’t be critical of your writing ability.”
I could see from the window that the van was ready to go. The doors were all open, Dory had her driving sunglasses on, and the kids were leaning against the tailgate as though their spines wouldn’t support their weight. I swear, those two were always tired.
“I think they’re waiting for me, Mom. I better go.”
“Okay. Don’t let them get you down. And, remember, if it gets really bad, you can ditch ’em and come on home.”
“Thanks, Mom. Oh, I forgot to ask you, are you still going out with Michael Evans?”
She laughed. “I guess I am. Nobody else is vying for my attention.”
“But you still like him?”
“Sure I do. But I’m not making too much out of this, Robin, so you don’t need to either. Get going now, so Dory doesn’t get antsy.”
“Bye, Mom! I’ll call you again soon.” I was happier than I thought I’d be to know that she wasn’t taking this Michael Evans thing too seriously. Not that I had anything against him personally. It
was just strange to think of my mother loving somebody I hardly knew. For as long as I could remember, the only person she’d really loved had been me. And, right now, I didn’t feel like splitting that pie into smaller pieces.
Dory let me drive the morning shift. The first couple of times I’d driven the minivan I’d been nervous, and, of course, Iris howled every time I braked too hard or parked crooked or anything. But by now I was getting used to it—I could relax a little and enjoy it. I kept thinking about how the world is supposed to be overpopulated, but out here you can drive for an hour and never even pass another car. Wyoming makes Iowa look crowded.
Something about looking into the distance like that makes you think about your own future. I mean, there are so many possibilities out in front of you, so many roads you could take. I decided Dory was right to zigzag across the country instead of making a beeline for Los Angeles. I’d seen pictures of L.A.; I knew what to expect. But all this stuff in between was constantly surprising.
Iris read a book and Marshall listened to his headphones all the way to the Big Horn Mountains where we had a picnic lunch in a field. Marsh was a little bit nervous that one of the sheep we could see in the distance might suddenly lower his big curly-horned head and charge us, but the sheep couldn’t be bothered with tourists.
“I’m finished,” he said, stuffing the last quarter of his sandwich into his cheeks. “Let’s get going.”
“What’s the big hurry?” Iris said. “It’s nice out here. Besides, I’m sick of being stuffed into that backseat.”
“You shouldn’t have brought so much junk. Mom wouldn’t have had to take the third seat out.” The two of them never stopped arguing about who brought more luggage.
“It’s beautiful here,” Dory said, spreading her arms and taking a deep breath, “but I guess we should get going. We’ve got a fairly long stretch still to drive.”
“Great. Why can’t you just tell us where we’re going?” Iris said.
“No, don’t tell!” Marshall said. “I want to be surprised!”